This image shows only the swells directed at Medlands Beach that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical February and is based upon 2664 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast.

The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ESE. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 8% of the time, equivalent to 2 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to occur in a normal February but 7% of the time you can expect swell in the range 1.3-2m (4-6.5ft) 7%, equivalent to (2 days). Taking into account the fraction of these swells that coincided with expected offshore winds, and given the fact that Medlands Beach is slightly protected from open water swells, we calculate that clean surf can be found at Medlands Beach about 8% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 32% of the time. This is means that we expect 11 days with waves in a typical February, of which 2 days should be clean enough to surf.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.